The Boy Within by Damien Stein: Crowdsourcing Campaign

 The short film "The Boy Within" tells the story of a young boy who gets lost in his imagination while on an adventure with his friends. While he enters a cardboard castle, he finds himself lost in a diverse universe that he does not control.

Numerous narrative references and surrealistic elements will enter this story, making it more like an exploration of the story of Alice in Wonderland: a character is set in a whirlwind of meetings and discoveries without being in total control.

This version promises a more raw feeling than the 1951 Disney treatment, closer to what  Ralph Steadman had imagined when he illustrated Lewis Carroll's book.

In his KissKissBankBank crowdsourcing campaign, Damien Stein notes the interchange from live-action to animation: the film starts in live-action, when boys are playing in a cardboard castle, yet swiftly moves into animation. When live-action again enters the story (in a constant exchange between dreaming and reality), it is filmed in such a way as to make live-action inhabit the animated world. he whole effect is blended in a way that resembles Hieronymus Bosch's paintings.

To achieve the effect of a camera moving incessantly from one setting to another, and embedding the child in a series of adventurous worlds, a multiplane camera will be used to denote this perpetual motion. The well-known film composer Michael Nyman (The Piano) and his piece Concert for piano MGV is hotly tipped to accompany the short (rights negotiations underway).

 The French animation and documentary director (also a musician) Damien Stein is the director of the short Ride Toward the Sea .

CREDITS:
Directed by Damien Stein
Art work by Gilduin Couronne
Animation by Sebastien Hivert
Music by Michael Nyman